An angel writing in a book of gold.

Exceeding peace had made Ben Adem bold,
And to the presence in the room he said:

'What writest thou?' The vision raised its head,
And with a look made of all sweet accord,

Answered: The names of those who love the Lord.'
And is mine one?' said Abou.

Nay, not so,'
Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,
But churly still, and said: 'I pray thee, then,
Write me as one that loves his fellow-men.'

The angel wrote and vanished. The next night

It came again, with a great wakening light,

And showed the names whom love of God had bless'd,
And lo! Ben Adem's name led all the rest.”

Leigh Hunt had a kind of Homeric proclivity for words curiously compounded. The cry of the wounded for water on the field of battle is called a "wound-voice." A man disabled on the field is "many wounded." Blind Milton is called "blank-eyed." Such a use of words might have been natural enough to one who wrote in Greek, but, regarded as an Englishman's use of his mother tongue, it seems quite artificial.

Few popular poets have owed less to nature, or more to art, than Leigh Hunt. He presents the curious spectacle of a poet most unnatural in his early life, growing more into fellowship with nature as he advanced in years.

The element of originality is wanting in much that he wrote. Many of his pieces are simply recasts of passages in old authors or Italian poets. He had a fine ear for the harmony of numbers. Though he might take some vigor from an old poem which he recast, he never marred its music. He delighted in the sweets of literature, and was assiduous in collecting them. If, like the bee, he had a delicate taste for "honeyed sweets," he was likewise armed with a sting, of which brother authors, as well as princes and tories, sometimes felt the wound. In the former part of his career he presents the strange spectacle of a man of affectionate disposition and quiet tastes engaged in political controversy and literary warfare. He cared little for dramatic literature, and seldom read plays; yet he had an ambition to shine as a writer for the stage. He was impatient with stage managers, because they did not bring forward his plays so promptly as their merits deserved; yet he never committed Fielding's indiscretion of organizing a private company to perform his plays. Notwithstanding his own distaste for the drama, and the slowness of managers to appreciate his merits, one of his most popular and most remunerative productions was a play, entitled, A Legend of Florence, which, after having had a run at the theater, was performed before the Queen at Windsor Castle.

Leigh Hunt's chief delight in literature was in the composition. of his poetry. He loved to turn aside from the prose of his severer literary labors into the flowery paths of poesy. Yet the former was his directer route to fame. His essays, many of which were published under the common title of The Indicator, are unsurpassed by anything which has appeared in the same department since Addison's Spectator. These have a correct and beautiful style, and are pervaded by a quaint and genial humor. Here the author's ready utterance and sprightly fancy are talents called into continual requisition. His subjects are frequently trivial, and are by no means the topics on which you are likely to consult the encyclopedia; yet, on dipping into articles with so unpromising titles as Sticks, Hats, or Pigdriving, you find a combination of fascinating narrative, quaint description, playful allusions, and apt quotations which greatly delight you. "A determined personality" pervades his essays. He did not fall in with the modern fashion of writers, and sink his own identity in that of the paper for which he wrote. He stood always before his readers as the man as well as the author. No writer ever had more intimate relation and sympathy with his readers than Leigh Hunt. The following extracts from his essay entitled, "My Books," will show on what terms of easy familiarity he stood with the public:

"Sitting last winter among my books, and walled round with all the comfort and protection which they and my fireside could afford me; to wit, a table of high-piled books at my back, my writing-desk on one side of me, some shelves on the other, and the feeling of the warm fire at my feet, I began to consider how I loved the authors of those books; how I loved them, too, not only for the imaginative pleasures they afford me, but for their making me love the very books themselves, and delight to be in contact with them. I looked sideways at my Spenser, my Theocritus, and my Arabian Nights; then above them at my Italian poets; then behind me at my Dryden and Pope, my romances, and my Boccaccio; then on my left side at my Chaucer, who lay on a writing-desk; and thought how natural it was in C. L. to give a kiss to an old folio, as I once saw him do to Chapman's Homer. While writing this article I am in my study again. Like the rooms in all houses in this country (Italy) which are not hovels, it is handsome and ornamented. On one side it looks toward a garden and the mountains; on another to the mountains and the sea. What signifies all this? I turn my back upon the sea; I shut up even one of the side windows looking upon the mountains, and retain no prospect but that of the trees. On the right and left of me are bookshelves; a book-case is affectionately open in front of me; and thus kindly inclosed with my books and the green leaves I write. If this is too luxurious and effeminate, of all luxuries it is the one that leaves you the most strength."

Of book-borrowing he speaks in the same essay:

"I own I borrow books with as much facility as I lend. I cannot see a work that interests me on another person's shelf without a wish to carry it off; but I repeat that I have been much more sinned against than sinning in the article of non-return, and am scrupulous in the article of intention. I never had a felonious intent upon a book but once; and then, I shall only say, it was under

circumstances so peculiar that I cannot but look upon the conscience that induced me to restore it as having sacrificed the spirit of its very self to the letter, and I have a grudge against it accordingly. Some people are unwilling to lend their books. I have a special grudge against them, particularly those who accompany their unwillingness with uneasy professions to the contrary, and smiles like Sir Fretful Plagiary. The friend who helped to spoil my notions of property, or rather to make them too good for the world 'as it goes,' taught me also to undervalue my squeamishness in refusing to avail myself of the books of these gentlemen. He showed me how it was doing good to all parties to put an ordinary face on the matter; though I knew his own blushed not a little sometimes in doing it, even when the good to be done was for another. I feel, in truth, that even when anger inclines me to exercise this, privilege of philosophy, it is more out of revenge than contempt. I fear that' in allowing myself to borrow books, I sometimes make extremes meet in a very sinful manner, and do it out of a refined revenge. It is like eating a miser's beef at him."

Hunt's nice observation of the ways of men appears in almost everything he wrote. It is manifested in a very pleasing way in his good-natured description of The Old Gentleman:

"He is very clean and neat; and in warm weather is proud of opening his waistcoat half-way down and letting so much of his frill be seen, in order to show his hardiness as well as taste. His watch and shirt-buttons are of the best, and he does not care if he has two rings on a finger. If his watch ever failed him at the club or coffee-house, he would take a walk every day to the nearest clock of good character, purely to keep it right. He has a cane at home, but seldom uses it, on finding it out of fashion with his elderly juniors. The old gentleman is very particular in having his slippers ready for him at the fire when he comes home. He is also extremely choice in his snuff, and delights to get a fresh boxfull in Tavistock-street, in his way to the theater. His box is a curiosity from India. He calls favorite young ladies by their Christian names, however slightly acquainted with them. He grows young again in his little grandchildren, especially the one which he thinks most like himself, which is the handsomest. He asks little boys in general who was the father of Zebedee's children. He is much struck when an old acquaintance dies, but adds that he lived too fast; and that poor Bob was a sad dog in his youth, 'a very sad dog, sir; mightily set upon a short life and a merry one."

Leigh Hunt's periods are addressed more to the fancy than to the understanding, and aim rather to please than to instruct. This design is apparent in all he wrote. He greatly dreaded the displeasure of the public. His sensitiveness to the opinions of others was an amiable weakness in his character. There is a passage in his autobiography which sets forth this trait in a light both ludicrous and beautiful. He is acknowledging gratefully some large and liberal pecuniary aid, which he received at a time when unable to relieve himself. He wonders whether he ought to blush for stating his obligation so publicly. He expresses his readiness to do so if it were thought fit he should, being loth not to do what is expected of him, even by a respectable prejudice, when it is on the side of delicacy and self respect."

There are different tastes as to how a tale or drama ought to end;

some preferring a bloody murder and others a happy marriage at the winding up. Our author wrote two endings for more than one of his longer pieces; one to gratify those whose fondness is for intense tragedy, and another for those who are miserable unless all the characters "marry and live happily ever afterward."

Notwithstanding his accommodating spirit, Leigh Hunt never shrunk from the advocacy of his opinions, however unpopular at the time. He was very persistent in his own literary ways and habits. Critics abused him for what they regarded as affectations and faults, but he never turned aside a hair's-breadth to follow their unfriendly advice. So faithfully did he adhere to his peculiarities, that they were at length regarded as elements of his genius. When Blackwood's Magazine leveled its keenest shafts at him and his friends, he never lost his equanimity nor abandoned his position. At last when missiles ceased to fall around him, his possession of the field was proof of victory, and his name began to be held in honor. A man with persistent boldness, in whatever cause, at length wins a kind of admiration from beholders. Many a character in literature, like one of Hunt's own heroes, has

"Made 'twixt daring and defect

A sort of fierce demand on your respect."

Some of Leigh Hunt's productions fell almost lifeless from the press, which afterward became very popular. Supposing that there was more in his works than the world perceived, he patiently prosecuted his literary career until at length he saw the tide turn in his favor. The public reread his books and found that there was more in them than they at first discovered. They remind us of the treacherous brother as affected toward the bride in the Story of Rimini. They look with interest upon

"E'en what before had seemed indifference,
And read them over in another sense."

Hunt's connection with politics often threw a cloud over his literary prospects and partially delayed the dawning of the day of his popularity. During many of the years in which he was struggling up to eminence tory critics lorded it over literature, and by their railing accusations and partisan abuse deterred the public from that admiration of his writings which would otherwise have risen spontaneously to greet him. So much unjust odium did the critics contrive to cast upon him, that he published his Sir Ralph Esher, a fictitious autobiography of the time of Charles II., anonymously, as the publisher would not permit his name to accompany the book lest it should injure the sales! Hunt was happy in being permitted to live until his name was held in better estimation.

The old hostility between himself and government was many years ago succeeded by a perfect reconciliation. He had the happiness of seeing many of the reforms which he had so ardently advocated in his youth quietly prevailing in his later years. He saw as much to admire in his queen as he had seen to detest in some of her remote relatives. Several of his beautiful poems are laden with compliments for her whom he calls

For the last ten years of his life the good-will of government was manifested toward him in the bestowment of a pension of two hundred pounds per annum.

Leigh Hunt died in August last, a loved and honored old man. For many years his house was a place of pilgrimage to friends and admirers from his own and other lands. A multitude of writers had grown up without the prejudices and animosities of some of their predecessors. These gathered affectionately and reverently around the genial patriarch of literature, and for many years scarcely a word has been written to his injury. He was eminently the friend of poets. Had he written nothing himself his name would long live enshrined in the writings of his brother poets. Keats wrote a beautiful poem in commemoration of the day of Hunt's release from prison. The last poem Shelley ever wrote was one welcoming his friend to Italy. It was a fitting and coincident return that the last words Leigh Hunt wrote for the public were to vindicate his friend from what he regarded as a misapprehension.

ART. V.-WESLEY AS A MAN OF LITERATURE.

[THIRD ARTICLE.]

VII. Our next department of review presents Mr. Wesley's character as a commentator.

The New Testament text of Mr. Wesley does not keep his name in remembrance or support his fame, but the Notes, the short, pithy, spirited, practical notes on the text. As a commentator or annotator he is not altogether original, acknowledging that he is indebted to Dr. Heylin, Dr. Guise, and Dr. Doddridge; but mostly to the learned German divine, Bengel or Bengelius, who became prelate of Wurtemburg, and died two years before the issue of the Explanatory Notes. The notes on the Revelation are chiefly from Bengel.